Monday, March 30, 2015

I will be honest and admit that
there isn’t really much about my rural life that could ever be described as
wild, but yesterday came pretty close. With the change from winter to
summertime I lost an hour of my beloved sleep, but there was no chance of a lie-in,
as I was required to perform my civic duty as a councillor at the bureau de
vote from 8 to 10 o’clock, but at least the Maire was generous enough to
provide coffee and croissants.

The weather was as dull and damp as it could be and so I returned home to find a dull and fed up husband who needed an outing to cheer him up as even the research on my patisserie purchase had failed to raise a smile (see here).

Recycling in the garden

Our local big town was hosting its annual
plant and garden fête that we have visited a number of times over the last ten
years. It isn’t quite Chelsea, but in it’s own small way it offers ideas and
the hope of better weather (it’s always held on a rainy weekend) and gives us
that taste of exciting summer days to come that we desperately need at the end
of winter. We enjoyed a mooch around, took some photos, picked up some flyers
about forthcoming gardening events, bought some seeds and a small plant.

Living roof

I always come away with big ideas
and this year the living roof fired my imagination. We will need to replace our
canvas pergola soon and I would love a wooden frame with green living roof to
give us a shady spot on the terrace for outdoor dining. It might come to
nothing, but at least the cheerful coloured plant displays lifted our spirits.

Cheery colours

Salon du vin Niort

We then decided to throw caution
to the wind and have a peek in the exhibition hall next door that was holding a
wine, food and chocolate fête – as if I could have turned my back on that. Our
3€ entry fee gave us a wine tasting glass that we clutched carefully as we
entered and started our tour. Being British, wandering up to strangers and
demanding a free sample of their wine doesn’t come easy, especially when you
glance at the price list and realise that no matter how delicious it is it
won’t be coming home with us. One of the first vintners to offer us a smile and
encourage us to step up with our glasses turned out to be an Englishman from the Domaine du Poujol. His family
have been making wine in the hills above Montpellier for twenty-one years and
we learned a lot from talking to him. We bought a lovely pale rosé and spurred
on with a little wine in our systems moved expertly from region to region
sampling reds and rosés and making a few more reasonably priced purchases along
the way. Not being used to mid-afternoon drinking (honestly) it wasn’t long
before my cheeks were flushed and head slightly spinning. Ade was driving and
sensibly made use of the spittoons provided, but the more I sampled the more it
upset me to throw it away. Thankfully there were food tasters on offer too
including a delicious organic chocolate and hazelnut spread.

Chocolate at the salon du vin et gastronomie

Charcuterie at the salon du vin et gastronomie

We certainly came home in better
spirits than we left and will now look forward to opening our new bottles, but
I do hate it when an innocent afternoon at a garden show gets hijacked by a
naughty wine fête, don’t you!

Sunday, March 29, 2015

Welcome to my patisserie challenge. This year I have decided to buy something different from our village boulangerie every Sunday and to enjoy the simple pleasure of treating myself each week.

Today is Palm Sunday, the last Sunday in Lent, or Rameaux in French. In our local area, the departments of Deux Sevres, Charentes and the Limousin have a speciality treat that is eaten today called the Cornuelle. It is a delicious buttery biscuit, triangular in shape, with frilled edges and a hole. Traditionally it would have been sprinkled with anise seeds, but it is now more common to use red and white aniseed flavoured sweets. Depending on your beliefs there are a couple of stories behind this tradition. In the Christian explanation the three sides of the triangle represent The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit and the hole is where a sprig of Box would have been placed when they were sold at the entrance to church on Palm Sunday.

The other story behind this Easter biscuit really made me smile. There is often a link between religious festivals and pagan beliefs and with this time of year being a celebration of spring and new life it is thought this triangle shaped biscuit represents the female reproductive organs. Oh yes, this really is a polka dot lady-garden biscuit, but it gets better. Available in other boulangeries, but sadly not ours, is the gentleman shaped version, but this is not a flat, decorated biscuit, oh no! The male version can either be a brioche or a cream filled choux bun and going by the pictures in our local paper is a very representative version. I shall leave the rest to your imagination but I have to say only in France could it be traditional to sell a cream filled willy on one of the most religious Sunday's in the Christian calendar. Vivre la France.

Don't forget to join me next week to see my next choice from Bernadette at the boulangerie.

Saturday, March 28, 2015

Today I'm taking part in a virtual book tour via France Book Tours for Scent of Triumph: A Novel of Perfume and Passion
by Jan Moran.Synopsis provided by the author.Perfume is the essence of beauty, the heart of illusion, the soul of desire. It is my past, my present, my future. —from the journal of Danielle Bretancourt.
When French perfumer and aristocrat Danielle Bretancourt steps aboard a luxury ocean liner, leaving her son behind in Poland with his grandmother, she has no idea that her life is about to change forever. The year is 1939, and the declaration of war on the European continent soon threatens her beloved family, scattered across many countries. Traveling through London and Paris into occupied Poland, Danielle searches desperately for the remains of her family, relying on the strength of Jonathan Newell-Grey, a British shipping heir and Royal Navy officer. Finally, in the wake of unspeakable tragedy, she is forced to gather the fragments of her impoverished family and flee to America. There she vows to begin life anew, in 1940s Los Angeles.Amidst the glamour of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Danielle works her way up from meager jobs to perfumer and fashion designer. Still, personal happiness eludes her. Can her sheer force of will attract the elusive love she desires, or will it only come at the ultimate cost?My review.
This beautiful looking cover drew me in and I immediately
found myself in a very engaging book with a storyline that made it very
difficult to put down. Danielle Bretancourt is a very strong woman who is
determined to do the best for her family despite the horrific and traumatic
situations they find themselves in. Her story is set in France, Poland and
America during the years of the Second World War where happiness is difficult
when family is fighting against family, undercover war work has to come before family
and death and destruction are never far away. Danielle’s escape is in her
perfume work and her skill and determination means she has the ability to
change her life through her work. It is the first book that has ever made my
nose tingle, as I could almost smell the fragrance descriptions as I was
reading it.

Danielle is torn between remaining in Europe to search for
her young son who has disappeared in Poland or taking her remaining family to
the safety of America and to a new life that must be built from scratch.
Wherever she is she never gives up on her goals no matter how low she gets and
she often puts her happiness second to making the right decisions for her
family. There are men in her life and she is a passionate woman, but it seems
that circumstance always puts the right man in the wrong place at the wrong
time. There were many very moving parts to this book that made me cry.

This book is more than just a romance novel and would appeal to those who enjoy reading about the French perfume and
fashion industries and those with an interest in historical fiction set during
the 1930’s and 1940’s.

JAN MORAN is the author of Fabulous Fragrances I and II, which earned spots on the Rizzoli Bookstore bestseller list, and other contemporary novels, including Flawless, Beauty Mark, and Runway. A fragrance and beauty industry expert, she has been featured on CNN, Instyle, and O Magazine, and has spoken before prestigious organizations, including The American Society of Perfumers. She earned her MBA from Harvard Business School and attended the University of California at Los Angeles Extension Writers’ Program.Visit her website. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, PinterestSubscribe to her newsletter

This is a fun read, easy to dip
in and out of and contains a good mix of fiction and non-fiction stories about
Paris, written by native Parisians and those who just love Paris. Some are real
life experiences by those who have made Paris their home, some are travel
memoir snippets of time spent in Paris and some are short stories with emotion,
romance and Paris as the perfect backdrop. I especially enjoyed the short
stories that were written in French as although my French is now quite good I
rarely choose to read in French so it was a good test for me. Don’t worry
though if your French isn’t up to reading as the translations are provided too,
which is a nice touch.

Some of the stories are from
names that are familiar to me but the great thing about an anthology is that it
gives an insight into authors whose work I haven’t come across before and I now
have a list of names to look out for. Not all the stories were quite as much my
thing as others but there were some very special ones that will stay with me.

Monday, March 23, 2015

Wow, what a page-turner! I was
spell bound by this dramatic read from the very first chapter. I started
reading on an afternoon and I had to force myself to stop a few chapters from
the end, as it was already way past my bedtime. It was a book that had to be
read to conclusion and even then it played on my mind long after I’d finished
reading it.

Set in a small town in Provence,
we meet Amy Carter at the start of a new adventure. Following her redundancy,
she leaves the UK and uses all her savings to restore a run down farmhouse,
Bellefontaine, and fulfil her dream of running it as a small and friendly
guesthouse. Although she has made a few friends, not everyone in the village is
pleased to see her and at times she feels very alone, especially when strange
things keep happening to her and the house. She is determined, strong and
although the village stories about centuries old religious practises on her
land intrigue her, she is not about to believe them or be intimidated by them.

Her neighbour, Fabien Coste is a
very important landowner whose family history is surrounded in local mystery
and who Amy tries to distance herself from, but with little success. When
things go wrong he always seems to be just around the corner offering her help
and advice and although falling in love was never in her plan she finds it hard
to fight her feelings. There is passion, mystery, dark goings on, history, myth
and fantasy all woven into Amy’s new life. When she learns of mysterious
but deadly links between the men from the Coste family and the ladies of
Bellefontaine she is determined to investigate the past, but at what cost to
her future?

A Spell in Provence
is available
in ebook format for only £1.99 and a link to Amazon can be found below.

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